DanComins_LMF_Analysis

//Learning Motivation and Fun//
 // **What are your 5 generalizations?** //

In the videos I viewed, one guy talked about tango lessons and mentioned that the “team” aspect really made it a lot of fun. Another guy talked about taking captain lessons and he enjoyed hanging out and joking around with the other people who were also learning along with him. One girl mentioned that she enjoyed going to learn how to wake surf with her friends because they were really supportive of each other. Another woman mentioned the interaction between people as a really fun part of her experience at a customer service-training workshop.
 * Hypothesis/Generalization 1**: High peer interaction amongst females of all age levels will be greater than that of males.
 * Conclusion**: I would say this is mildly true. 31/69 (or 45%) males reported that their experiences involved high peer interaction, and 43/88 (or 49%) females reported the same. Not much of a difference there, but at the other option of a little peer interaction, 33/88 (38%) females compared to 20/69 (29%) males reported at least some peer interaction, so overall, females did report higher levels of peer interaction that their male counterparts, but not as overwhelmingly as I had anticipated. But clearly, peer interaction seems to be an important element of fun for many people, with almost half of both genders reporting it at a high level, and between 70-80% citing at least some level of peer interaction (either high or low).

However, of those that did mentioned competition as high, one woman talked about a high school experience where people competed with each other for prizes (and probably “bragging rights”) in a “vocab bee” to prepare for the SATs, and the competition helped make it fun. Another woman talked about a race identifying plants during a sixth grade camp where the winner (whoever identified the plants the fastest) would get a prize.
 * Hypothesis/Generalization 2**: Males aged 10-19 will report more high importance level of competition than females aged 10-19.
 * Conclusion**: Two interesting findings here – firstly, females aged 10-19 reported a high importance level of competition more than males of the same age – 32% to 19% respectively. Secondly, a high importance level of competition really didn’t seem to matter to these groups – less than a fifth of males 10-19, and about a third of the females 10-19. Comparing these numbers to the overall male and female groups I found that males (at all ages) were the same (19%), and females (at all ages) were only slightly higher than that at around 19.5%. So clearly competition (at least at a high level) wasn’t all that important to the majority of people. In fact, of the videos I watched no one mentioned anything about the competition level at all.

One person recounted a high school history class where the class was allowed to role-play the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, and it’s clear that the fantasy element really made this a fun experience for him, but he clearly learned a lot, recounting it into adulthood. He enjoyed getting to play Sacco and “hamming it up.” That and interacting with peers made it a lot of fun for him and really turned him on to history that sounds like it helped inspire him to be a history teacher today.
 * Hypothesis/Generalization 3**: When comparing the two largest age groups (10-19, 20-29) some sort of fantasy element will be more common among the 10-19 group than the 20-29 group.
 * Conclusion**: 16/44 (36%) of 10-19 year olds reported that some sort of fantasy element was involved in their fun learning whereas 14/50 (28%) reported some sort of fantasy element. Certainly not a big difference, but the 10-19 group did report more fantasy elements involved. I also decided to see what 30-39 year olds reported to see if it’s a downward trend and that figure turned out to be 8/29 (28%), the same percentage as that of 20-29 year olds who reported some sort of fantasy element, so there was no difference there. Interestingly, no one reporting an experience in the 10-19 year old group is currently 10-19, so I wonder if the percentage would be higher asking actual 10-19 year olds.


 * Hypothesis/Generalization 4: Importance of high levels of social recognition (as opposed to medium, low, or none) will be greater among males than females. **
 * Conclusion**: 15/69 (22%) males reported high level of importance of social recognition whereas 21/88 (24%) females reported a high level of important of social recognition, so apparently there is virtually no difference between the two groups and isn’t really rated that highly at only about a quarter, which makes sense because of the videos I watched, no one really mentioned social recognition at all despite having marked it down as high.

The guy who went to St. Thomas to take lessons on how to be a boat captain mentioned that he and all the guys he was learning with were really interested in their topic. The girl who learned wake surfing also was clearly enthused about learning to wake surf, and I’m willing to bet she’s been out many times since her experience. A man named Dave and his girlfriend had really wanted to learn to make chocolates for a long time, so they were really motivated to learn and had a lot of fun because they were learning to do something they had always wanted to try.
 * Hypothesis/Generalization 5**: A high enthusiasm for subject matter will be important for the majority of both males and females.
 * Conclusion**: 101/159 (64%) of individuals reported their enthusiasm for the subject as high so obviously (and not surprisingly) a high level of enthusiasm makes learning much more fun. I also noticed that most of these respondents reported that the content type was either hobby or academic, and only a relative few reported that it was tied to work skills, so people also seemed to have more fun for elective type things like hobbies and academics, rather than something they had to learn for work, although I did see one related to work.